One of the largest government-mandated paperwork and cost burdens imposed upon any segment of private industry are the reporting requirements relating to commercial motor vehicles (CMV). Commercial Motor Vehicles (CMV) and their respective drivers and carriers are required by various federal regulations and international agreements to comply with rules governing the safe operation of the vehicles and the reporting of fuel taxes. In 1937, the federal government imposed hours-of-service (HOS) regulations upon commercial motor vehicle drivers operating commercial vehicles in the domestic motor carrier industry to ensure highway safety. Under direction of Congress, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has scrutinized and periodically revised the hours-of-service regulations to aid in the reduction of driver fatigue and sleep disorder related incidents on the nation's highways.
Federal regulations relating to the safe operation of Commercial Motor Vehicles (CMV) are defined in 49 CFR Part 395 and 49 CFR Part 390.5, the entirety of each of which are incorporated by reference. One way in which safety is promoted in the hours-of-service regulations is to prohibit drivers from operating or being forced to operate their vehicles more than a specified amount of time between mandatory off-duty periods. In 1987, the FMCSA permitted carriers the flexibility of using an automatic on-board recording devices (AOBRD) instead of the traditional reporting method involving manual data entry and filing of reports by the CMV drivers and/or their carriers.
The International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) is an agreement among jurisdictions in the United States, Mexico and Canada that simplifies the reporting of fuel-use tax for diesel, gasoline, gasohol, propane, and natural gas consumption by commercial motor vehicles. Fuel-use tax is included in the purchase price of the fuel and then later redistributed to those jurisdictions where the vehicle actually was driven while consuming fuel. For example, a driver of a CMV may purchase diesel fuel in the state of Texas and travel outside of Texas to a neighboring state, e.g., Louisiana, using the same diesel fuel purchased in Texas. IFTA requires carriers to report actual mileage driven in each jurisdiction so that the actual taxes collected may be later apportioned to Texas and Louisiana in accordance with actual vehicle operation. Each day, some 6.4 million drivers complete HOS logs to track driver compliance with HOS regulations. In addition, fuel tax logs are created daily for some 10 million trucks. The cost of compliance with these reporting requirements is extraordinarily burdensome. It is estimated that the annual cost of complying with reporting requirements using paper logs is approximately $2,000.00 per driver and $2,000.00 per commercial motor vehicle. This results in a paper log compliance cost of $31 billion dollars per year imposed upon private industry.